Febuary 10th – What religion class gets you thinking about

All my info is in my bio, but since this is my first entry I’ll introduce myself.

I’m Nora(pseudonym), 16 from Germany. I guess I’ll get to the thought(s) of the week;

In Germany, maybe a few of you won’t know, we have religion class in school. My family’s protestant(my own religion is another thing tho), which means I gotta take protestant religion class or choose philosophy instead. I didn’t choose anything else though just because protestant class is super chill and I don’t wanna worsen my grades.

In this weeks’ classes we talked about ‘ton eschaton’ or ‘Eschatologie'(study of the end, apocalypse, afterlife etc.). And our teacher might be chill but he is a convinced christian. Being honest here for a sec, I’d be a liar to still call myself a convinced christian, maybe not even a christian. I do think religion fills a purpose however, because back in the days it formed our ethical thinking besides other things I guess. But what irked me about this class was only when we talked about the afterlife, or rather; is it gonna be heaven or hell?

So to give it away, it’s probably gonna be hell for me, as I can’t truly believe in god, or Jesus for that matter. Apparently, I found out, you could commit horrible sins but believing in Jesus will wash away your sins just like that. But me who hasn’t done anything in their life, maybe a bit of bad and good but hell I’m 16, I’d go straight to hell after the carcrash next saturday. I can’t even lie here, I was a little bit scared by my future prospectives. Don’t you often get that irky unwell feeling in your stomach when you have to think about death? Usually the atheist mindset of absolute nothingness has been enough for me. But burning in hell for eternity? Come on! Do I wanna risk that?

And then I started thinking; what if that’s how the christian belief has so many followers? Fear. To be honest if god exists I am a little bit angry at him for inducing fear in me just so he can then ‘hold me in his arms’. Buddhism is so much more chill. And I swear if aliens are watching us from really far away they’re probably thinking we’re all lunatics!

All this reminded me of these horrible ‘chain letters'(Kettenbriefe) back in the days. Before facebook had it’s big rise in Germany, young teenagers and kids(such as 9 year old me) would use ‘Jappy’. But there were so many horrible people in this community who would send these chain letters to everybody that contained a super scary ghost story, with ‘proof’ from google and in order not to be terribly slaughtered by the ghost you’d have to send the letter to 20 more people.

This was the same feeling. Religion class and these nasty letters.

I don’t enjoy thinking about it too much (ironically). If anybody has an opinion on this, whichever it may be, you can voice it freely. Maybe talking about it to others will make me feel less uneasy.

Child_of_the_Light

16 years old from Germany
I felt I had a few things to share, not really for the sake of others, more just for me. But I'm making it public 'cause otherwise it feels like I'm talking to nobody. Feel free to interact though. I like art.
Find out anything else about me in my journal. ;)